“If I’m being honest and completely transparent right now of the price that is being asked for some of the players that we’ve inquired about, for us, it’s more detrimental to our present and our future than we’d like,” said Williams, speaking in the White Sox dugout prior to Monday’s contest at Safeco Field. “We’ll see how that develops. But right now, I don’t see anything materializing.”

… “Real quickly, what it is is a limited market for us. What we view as potential help is, really, there’s only a small group of players,” Williams said. “And even with that, we all still have to have the conversation amongst ourselves and we kind of do it on a daily basis this time of year, amongst ourselves what we’re looking at the right fit.

“The right fit, both skill set-wise, fit in the lineup or fit, whether it be a bullpen piece, a starter piece. Is it the right fit? Are you going to gain exponentially by making that move in lieu of staying with what you have? And I’m very mindful of how this team has banded together and overcome a mountain of hurdles to get to where they want to get right now.

“So, I think you have to be very cognizant of doing something that isn’t, like I said, exponentially better and making sure it’s not disruptive at the same time,” Williams said.

… “If you’re going to, again, make such a move, you’d better make sure that player is going to come here, and when the guy walks through the door, have the feeling that, ‘OK, this is going to add to in a major way or tweak in a minor way,’ such as we did in 2005 with Geoff Blum to where it is a need that is filled,” Williams said. “Otherwise, you’re better off standing pat.

“Obviously, we put the roster together thinking it can compete, it could be a winning roster, and I like the fight in them. But how they fought through some of the adversity lately has just been, and you take [Sunday’s] game that was another one we should have won in Minnesota as well, you take those and then you go back through all the losses we’ve had in the past six weeks or so, and they have fought to the very end.

“As a general manager, you can only hope and pray that your coaching staff can get the guys to play at that level of intensity and the players themselves have to have it internally to keep that drive going,” Williams said. “As I sit here, I’m very cognizant of all those things and we will go through our drills and have our conversations. But it’s a very small group of players that may be potentially available and can help.”

July 26, 2009

Joe Cowley from the Sun Times reported in a radio interview that the Chicago White Sox might be interested in acquiring Indians ace Cliff Lee or Diamondbacks ace Dan Haren. Cowley went on to say that Octavio Dotel mentioned he might be part of a “3 team deal” which would send Lee to the White Sox. Gavin Floyd is the name Cowley through out as the potential “centerpiece” of a Dan Haren Deal. …